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Hello, everyone! My name is John McGrail, I am a complete sucker for a great love song, and I believe that if you’re not learning, you’re not living. Today I’m going to be talking about the incredible lady that my bride is and how my life is so much better because of her.
So, what’s today’s fun fact? One of my bride’s and my first dates was my high school prom. Have you heard about this somewhat new thing called a promposal? She and I now have high schooler’s of our own so we’re getting into the prom scene again. My bride has also been a teacher off and on again since 1993 so she has seen some prom history firsthand. So, these promposals are based on the idea of coming up with the biggest, boldest, most fantastic ways to win your date to the big dance. Literally thousands of dollars are being spent on these. There are crazy pictures online that show the lengths, breadth, and depth of these things. It’s staggering—there’s one I saw where the young man filled the main hallway of his school with helium-filled balloons, as in 1,500 of them along with the huge sign asking his girl to go with him. What are these folks going to do when it comes time for the marriage proposal? Dude!
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Now, here’s what I learned yesterday:
High School, Senior Year, 7:22, 23, 24? Some awful minute of every weekday when first period started. In our school system when you took an Advanced Placement course you traveled to the system’s central facility from your own school. Then we you were done you went back to your normal routine. So, first thing everyday she came in the door. Our teacher thought it would be fun to play matchmaker so she assigned our seats next to each other so we’d have to converse with each other. The class was AP Spanish so our conversation never went too deep. “What did you do last night? Did you study for our test today?,” you know that sort of thing. She was stunningly beautiful, unbelievably smart and had such a great foundation in her life, faith, friendships, everything—at least in my eyes. She was everything that I knew would be unattainable for someone like me. But yet, there was something in her that at least tolerated me and I guess gave me the slightest encouragement to try the next step of actually asking her out. Almost at the end of the year the prom was coming around and I decided I would ask her—not without being a nervous wreck about it. So, I decided to try asking her to lunch after church to then actually ask her to come to my prom. We both love telling the story today of me pacing around the phone and my mother saying “Good grief, pick up the phone and call! It’s not like you’re going to marry her!!” so after finally making the call and her considering my offer her mother saying “Just go! It’s not like you’re going to marry him!!”
We lunched, I stammered out my elaborate promposal—“uh, would you like to go to, um, my prom?” We prom-ed, it was lovely, and as it turned out we would be going to the same university in the fall. We went our friendly ways after the big night but I always kept in touch to know what she was up to. We ended up living in dorms close by and sometime a few weeks into our first semester, through mostly my pestering and this time her sister saying “why would you not go out with him? He’s a nice guy who obviously adores you…” we started dating. That was the fall of 1989.
College was a lot of on again off again but there never was anyone else that either of us went out with seriously throughout the whole time. I actually broke things off as we were entering our final semester together as I needed her to decide if she was on the same page as I was seeing this going the lifelong distance and she couldn’t. We both grew up a lot during that final semester and at the end of it she came back to say that if I still saw the same things she knew that she didn’t want a life without me in it. She started student teaching in the fall of 1993 and I looked for work in my new credit union field. She was living with one of her best friends from childhood and they were both teaching. I asked her roommate to find a reason to amscray as I planted my tuxedo from my time with the Glee Club in the bathroom hidden away. I snuck away during a commercial, changed quick, and came back on one knee and the answer was yes.
9 months later we started our married life together. Our small apartment was a great home. She taught at her parent’s high school and I started my credit union professional journey. While many marriages have a challenging beginning we fell into a very comfortable rhythm right from the start, probably because we had been together for almost five years before getting married. The only remaining challenge was actually living together and we didn’t really struggle with much there thankfully. We also got ourselves involved in a Small Group of folks within our church that gave us a community of couples and families all working through the same issues of life, faith, and family. That is something we have continued to this day no matter where we have gone.
My bride and I will celebrate 22 years together married in June of this year. We have four amazing kids and thankfully a very rich legacy already of people that we have been able to serve through her years of teaching and my years in financial services. My bride is amazing. She teaches AP Calculus and the four-year-old with skill and care, she takes care of our home creating an environment where we laugh often, forgive and ask for forgiveness, and face struggles together. She loves our children fiercely. She loves and keeps me pointed in the right direction. Our marriage has had its share of ups and downs like all marriages do. We have faced those challenges more gracefully than others from time to time. She and I crossed the line where we had been together longer than we had not in our whole lifetimes when we were 37 years old and I’m confident that we will be one of those couples that celebrates our 30th, 40th, and who knows maybe even 50th anniversaries together. We decided in the beginning that divorce would never be an option for us so we will have to struggle and succeed through whatever comes…together.
Here’s what I learned:
I am pro-my marriage. Our culture has been at real odds lately about how marriage is defined but I think we’ve missed the opportunity to talk about what it means. And while I have my own convictions around what those definitions look like that’s not what I’m talking about here. I have been given the gift to love someone unconditionally, to battle with my own selfishness, and to teach our children what a good marriage can look like—maybe even at moments what a great one looks like. You all know that I have gone through an emotionally dark place over the last several months during my period of unemployment. What I can testify is this…my bride has stood next to me, kicked me when necessary, and loved me well through all of it. We’re far from everything being rosy even though I’ve started my new job, there are many, many challenges ahead and I can’t imagine facing those things without knowing what I have at home. I wish I knew a Hallmark card writer who could sum all of this up for me with the perfect words. The only ones I can come up with are: Constance, thank you for being my bride. I love you more than I can say.
I’m John McGrail, and this has been Stuff I’m Learning Everyday.
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